


Any Other Song Would Be Just As Sweet

by KieranVieran



Series: The Lyric AU (Gyptian Lyra) [1]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gyptian Lyra, Alternate Universe - No Prophecy, But really TV Canon with the finer details of Book Canon, Five Short Chapters, Gen, Technically Mixed Canon - Book and TV because the HDM wiki doesn't differentiate much between either, might continue we'll see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25576840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KieranVieran/pseuds/KieranVieran
Summary: The title comes from the fact that my brain in trying to remember Shakespearean quotes, often bastardizes them.AU (set loosely in the HBO/TV universe, with smaller details from the books because I can) where Ma Costa got her wish and raises Lyra (now renamed Lyric) as her only daughter, alongside Tony and Billy.Five Short Chapters. All Completed. Might Continue As A Series We'll See.
Series: The Lyric AU (Gyptian Lyra) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853701
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set before a year and a half before an equivalent to canon. All 5 chapters take place in the course of a single afternoon.

“Lyric! Lyric Costa! You come back here!” Maxwell Jansink called after the young dark-haired girl jumping from narrowboat to narrowboat, her dæmon laughing and shifting with each leap. Upon the last jump, Pan shifted back to his recently most comfortable form, that of a young river otter and climbed Lyric’s arm to sit up on her shoulder.

“Y’know, if Pan settles as an otter, eventually he’ll get too big to sit on your shoulder like that.”

“Oh, shut up, Tony,” Lyric rolls her eyes at her older brother from where he was standing in the doorway of the _Persian Queen_ , Lyuba a yawning black and white cat at his feet. “It’s not like _Lubbie_ is _that_ close to settling either,” she huffs, brushing past them both with Pan as a white ermine now tucked into her blue coat’s pocket.

Tony and Lyuba spun on their heels, silent anger clear as day on both of their faces. “Uh oh, now you’ve done it!” Pan squeaked as a mouse, trying to burrow further into the pocket everyone knew he was hiding in.

“Oh, yeah? Well, Pan’s a _coward_.”

“Yeah, I know. We _all_ know. Pan would tell you himself if he wasn't scared half to death. And by whom, I might add? Oh, right, you _and_ Lubbie…” She kept going, incessantly chattering. _It’s a wonder Pan hasn’t settled early as a squirrel. A noisy, noisy squirrel._ It absolutely wasn’t a wonder when her nonstop talking finally got under her brother’s skin and he shouted at her, Lyuba having shifted to a growling Doberman Pinscher.

“Stop, _Lyra_! Stop! Just shut up!” 

The confused and scared look on her face almost outright mirrored the heartbroken and betrayed look on his, _their_ mother’s. Not another word was spoken or another breath muttered as Ma Costa pointed him out the door. Jal, the goshawk dæmon on her shoulder not once breaking his disdainful gaze from Tony and especially Lyuba, who in his opinion as a dæmon should’ve known better. She’d come back with Billy in one arm and a bag of special treats for after the eel they were going to have for dinner. Now her eldest had carelessly double-crossed one of biggest secrets in not only their own family, but in their _entire_ community at large, and she was left to deal with the pieces.

Lyric (or Lyra) whimpers much like she had done all those years previously, when the high and mighty and pompously grandiose Lord Asriel had first placed the daughter he’d never planned for nor intended to keep in her supposedly lowly Gyptian arms. It broke her heart all over again, even after ten years of seeing her happy and bright, living and learning on the best of all the Gyptian narrowboats. However, she was more than a tad biased.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set before a year and a half before an equivalent to canon. All 5 chapters take place in the course of a single afternoon.

“Why did Tony call me _Lyra_ , Ma? Why?” Lyric/Lyra said, hurt oozing and dripping as she formed the words and let them fall from her tongue. 

“Lyric, sweetie,” Ma Costa said in her comforting Mum voice, the honey-rich voice most aptly applied alongside some traded-for bloodmoss ointment and a homemade bandage as the best cure for the skinned knees her middle child was all too acquainted with. 

Pan peeked finally out of his hiding place, but he was also (now) a ginger kitten too big for said coat pocket, and so Lyric had to stop being _hurt_ for a minute and instead briefly focused on how to untangle a trembling dæmon’s claws from her coat without tearing it or hurting them both. It would’ve amused all four of them if there was any other conversation taking place, but there wasn’t, so Ma Costa stayed quiet.

Unfortunately, her daughter partially misunderstood this silence as a refusal to answer. “No, _why_ ? Why did Tony spit that _landloper_ name at me, as if it were any equal to _mine_?"

Ma Costa sighed, sitting down next to where her only daughter had half hidden herself... No, half-cocooned herself and Pan in a pile of blankets on their small built-in couch. Jal looked on, perched on the windowsill above, nervous preening obviously betraying their state of mind. 

“Come here, my little song. And you too, Pan, if you wish,” her Ma said, carefully unwrapping and unwinding the cocoon, enough to be able to pull Lyric into a reassuring hug, while Pan still in kitten form scrambled up the couch to nuzzle the taller Jal. Ma Costa tried to savour these last minutes, even seconds of the decade’s long half-truth before it was shattered like breaking glass forever. 

Eventually, though Lyric squirmed and wiggled out of the hug, protesting she was much too old for cuddling and that this hug had now crossed into cuddling territory. Ma Costa laughed a breathless laugh, and couldn’t help picturing what _teasing_ her Anthony would’ve said about that. She pushed it from her mind. Her husband, the father of her children, had died “in a fight” shortly after meeting a newborn Billy.

“Lyric, you are a Costa. Always, _always_ remember that. You _are_ a Costa, and what I must tell you now, will _never_ change that. No matter what you decide or who you marry. Got it?”

“Tell me. Both of you,” she demanded seriously as Lyric made an automatic cringing “No Cooties” face at _any_ word connected to marriage. 

“Okay, okay,” Pan jumped down cautiously, an white ermine once more to sit himself as an anchor point for Lyric to find comfort in, beyond her mother’s voice speaking confusing, scary words in a reassuring yet frightfully calm tone. Lyric was more hesitant to respond but she nodded silently and Pan said, “Continue, please. We can handle it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set before a year and a half before an equivalent to canon. All 5 chapters take place in the course of a single afternoon.

“Of that we have little doubt,” Jal said in a paternal tone, his voice deep and rich. “Then why wait to tell us? If it was so important?”

“Because Lyric, this knowledge is a risk. It’s  _ dangerous _ .”

“Then shouldn’t I  _ extra _ know? If it’s as unsafe as swimmin’ in murky rivers.” Ma Costa shook her head, but then she had herself to thank that her daughter’s biggest concern up to this point had been the stomach aches and sickness that could happen if Gyptian children tried to swim in unclean waters without double-checking with a grownup if it was safe first.

“I…” She looked up at Jal, “ _ We _ wanted to wait until your settling ceremony, until you had earned your ring… But unfortunately, Tony had other plans. I don’t think he meant it with the malice he felt, but what is done is done and Lord Faa and I will talk to him later. That was cruel, I wanted to tell you myself.”

“What, though?” Lyric questioned almost automatically, only half-distracted by the sight of Billy babbling and reaching for Ratter, only so named as they’ve begun recently noticing that Billy’s dæmon will only shift into various forms of rodents. It was odd according to Coram Van Texel and Lord Faa, but not especially uncommon. Turning away from Billy and Ratter, and their game of “keep away”, Lyric refocused her attention on her mother, who had noticed her staring and paused her grand explanation of what she was talking about. Or rather what she hadn’t  _ wanted _ to talk about before...

“Lyric, as much as you are a Costa, as much as you are  _ mine _ , by Name and Love. You en’t by my Birth nor my Blood.”   
  
At that, she expected her only daughter to recoil in terror and horror. To deny it and cry. Or to become petrified and barely move a muscle, without saying a word. At the same time, she also expected anger and balled up punches, thumb-sized bites from Pan until they both exhausted themselves into a nap out of sheer fury. What she got instead was something Lord Asriel or her Lyric’s birth mother, whoever she had been, would never be so lucky to even see. Let alone receive. Her daughter’s forgiveness.

Lyric hugged her with no less force than the great panserbjørne of The North were said to be able to muster. Then predictably came the torrent of all the  _ questions _ . “Who were they? Who  _ are _ they? Are they still alive? Do they know I’m with you? Of course they’d know I’m with you… Where was I born? Do I have any other siblings besides Tony and Billy? Oh, oh, any more cousins like Kerim and Jaxer? Is that why sometimes, I get riversick when they don’t?” and on and on. And on. Even Jal was thrown off his usual stoicism, complete with ruffled feathers.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set before a year and a half before an equivalent to canon. All 5 chapters take place in the course of a single afternoon.

“Lyric, Lyric Costa. I’ll tell you everything I know, and everything you could hope to know.” At that, Lyric calmed down and Pan shifted in her arms to that of a Beagle puppy for her to pet as they listened.

“You were born in August, 1984. Your name at birth was Lyra, and you were the smallest infant I’d ever laid my eyes on without being born early. I was hired to look after you by a wealthy landloper whose name he made me swear an oath not to tell you before yours and Pan’s settling ceremony. Your birth mother I never knew. But it was clear for some reason or another, that she couldn’t take care of you. So I did, by February of that next year, 1985… I’d spent a better half of a year living on land…”

“But who was looking after the  _ Persian Queen _ ? While you were gone?”

“Lyric! Shh… Don’t interrupt!” Pan angrily whispered in her ear, more than half of it still tinged with an upset puppy’s whine. 

Ma Costa suppressed a chuckle or a smirk at Pan’s objections, before continuing on answering her daughter’s question, “You were a newborn at the time, and not much older than that when he passed. But it was my brother, your uncle, Benjamin. Those six months he had the  _ Persian Queen  _ moored in the Thames, but that’s another story. For when you’re older.  _ Much _ older. Now, will you let me finish?”

She nodded eagerly, her uncle already forgotten, and Pan thumped his beagle tail softly against her favorite brown overalls. “So where was I? Right, 1985, ten almost eleven years ago now. Ugh, you’re getting so big.”

“Ma,” Lyric said embarrassed. “Why? There’s no one else to hear.” They were on a narrowboat, moored on a riverbank,  _ everyone _ else could hear.

“Still,” Lyric said simply, and Pan interrupted this time, “Finish the story, Ma!”

"Ok. Ok,  _ ziel-gesproken _ . You both had barely been on Earth six whole months and in truth, I missed the water. The gentle rocking of a river lulling me to sleep, how quickly I could get from one market to the next in just days. My family and friends, Billy hadn’t been born yet. You were there for his birth, but Tony had been. He stayed with my mother, Mary Stefanski.”

“So you stole away with me like a thief in the night?” She said with the excitable innocence only someone young with an unsettled dæmon could possess.  “ _ What _ ? No, and I’m shocked you would  _ ever _ say such a thing. You know what lopers say about us, how we’re all  _ thieves and cutthroats _ . Not another word of such talk, Lyric, I  _ mean _ it. We trade fair and true in this family and that’s the end of that.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set before a year and a half before an equivalent to canon. All 5 chapters take place in the course of a single afternoon.

“So how _does_ the story end?” Lyric prompted, nearly unfazed by the lecture. Meanwhile Pan was slumped underneath Lyric’s hand, decidedly _not_ looking Jal in the eye.

“Your father, the Nameless one, not your Pa. He went out on one of his horses, hunting. Late at night but you were hungry, so I had stayed up to feed you. Then I heard a knock at the door, and grew anxious, for I knew who it was. He was a man who had felt wronged by your father, and yes, in some ways, he was in the right. But he planned to take his revenge too far, by harming you _and_ me. Your father stopped him and thus, saved your life. About the only truly good action he has ever done. Anyway, after he _did_ , he gave me enough money and food to book passage back to London by train. Just before I left. I stood on his doorstep, in the cold, grey hours of the morning, and he placed you and Pan in my arms with only a small goodbye from his dæmon. He, the Nameless, said nothing. _That’s_ the end of the story. Well, the beginning of it anyway. The rest you have to write.”

Pan jumped off her lap to the ground, and Lyric leant forward to hug her mother again as tears fell from her cheeks. Pan shifted to a songbird to comfort Jal who also looked uncharacteristically overwhelmed, as much as a goshawk dæmon could visibly be. Ma Costa, still wiping away tears, couldn’t help smiling at Pan’s current form. “You know, when I first met Pan. Long before either of you could say your first words in either English or Fens-Dutch, one of his very first forms as he was just beginning to start shifting was a robin. A red-throated robin, that would sing you to sleep until inevitably, he fell asleep himself.” The thought made Lyric sleepy but content. Her head landing on her Ma’s shoulder as Pan hopped down to nestle as a robin in the palm of her open hand. 

Ma Costa slowly and carefully managed to get off the couch without waking the sleeping pair up. She tucked them in as Pan stirred slightly, not enough to wake Lyric but enough to shift back into the form of a brown and white mouse in order to sleep on top of the blanket like he likes. Ma Costa smiled softly at this and held a finger up to her lips as Billy toddled towards her. Quickly, Ma Costa and Jal took him outside, in order to look for Tony before dinner and to keep Billy from waking up Lyric.


End file.
